Where It Excels

PhraseExpress is pretty powerful, and does a lot more than just simple text expansion. Apart from just expanding the snippets you manually create, it can watch everything you type, learn your own individual style, and start autocorrecting phrases for you as you type. It also has a huge dictionary of oft-misspelled words so you get autocorrect in any app on your system. Some may see this as a plus, though it can also contribute to some issues. It also has a ton of advanced settings that let you really dig down and tweak how you use text expansion, which is great for power users.

Where It Falls Short

PhraseExpress is kind of a pain to use. Sure, it's highly configurable, but there are some simple things that it just doesn't do right. For example, if you have a rather long snippet, you'll need to use the "clipboard" method of text expansion if you want it to move faster than a snail. However using the clipboard method means you can't paste clipboard contents within snippets (even though Breevy seems to handle this just fine). You can get around this by setting different expansion methods for longer snippets, but it's workarounds like this that just make it incredibly annoying to use. Still, it's free, and if the alternative is a $40 program, most of you are probably willing to do a bit of tinkering for these special situations.

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Furthermore, the extra built-in features can sometimes get in the way more than they actually help. If you don't want system-wide autocorrect, or you don't want it to track everything you type, it'll probably annoy you more than anything. The built-in "web site" snippets even replace links you type with affiliate links for PhraseExpress, which is a little ridiculous. However, you can turn it all off in the settings, so if you don't like it, you can turn it into a simple text expansion program—though beginners are likely to find some frustration starting out.

The Competition

If PhraseExpress is a bit too complicated for you, Texter is much simpler. Written by our own Adam Pash, you just type in your snippets, give them a trigger key if desired, and you're off to the races. Some people have noticed a few quirks (like when gaming or with autocorrect acting a bit glitchy), but others have found it to be rock solid. Either way, it's a simple, free alternative if PhraseExpress isn't doing it for you.

If you're willing to pay, the $40 Breevy (my text expander of choice) is probably the most stable, easy-to-use option without sacrificing features. It would probably win our pick for best if it weren't so darn expensive, but it really is worth the price if you can't stand PhraseExpress.

These aren't the only apps on Windows, but they represent the best that Windows has to offer. If you have a favorite we didn't mention, let us know what it is and why you love it in the comments.

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Lifehacker's App Directory is a new and growing directory of recommendations for the best applications and tools in a number of given categories.